What Features Are Included With the Free Core Plugin?
Founded on the principle of “Democratizing” learning and leaning on the concept that everyone has a course within them, LifterLMS provides a free version of the LifterLMS plugin to give everyone a voice in the learning space. What does that mean?
1. Free and accessible way to create and share your own courses 2. Easy to use and customize for any type of learning content 3. Powerful integrations with other popular platforms 4. All the features you need to build a successful online course with minimal effort
When LifterLMS set out to meet the requirements of a Minimal Viable Product for users while keeping the installation and setup easy, we settled on core basic needs:
- Membership Management
- Built-in Course Builder
- Ability to Track Orders
- Ability to Quiz
- Reporting
- Engagements / Notifications
- Ability to Integrate
Membership Management – With the Free version of LifterLMS, you are able to offer your users Membership to your site. The membership tools are site-wide and give you the ability to section off elements of your site for use by assigned member groups. It is also useful for allowing groups of courses to be sold under a consolidated transaction. This level of control enables the course creator to sell courses one by one, or group them together into packages. The number of possible memberships and courses is only limited by the course builder’s imagination. There is also no restriction on the number of users the site can register.
As users join the site using the Member Tools, they will be assigned roles built into the WordPress User listing. A great resource to look at for User Roles is our Roles and Capabilities resource.
Built-In Course Builder – LifterLMS contains the Course Builder which very intuitively assists the course creator by quickly and visually laying out the curriculum or syllabus in an outline fashion. The course builder expands and contracts its sections, allowing the creator to focus on the sections of the course they are developing. There are no restrictions as to the depth of the course in regard to Sections or Lessons. The hierarchy of the course is:
- Course – Uses a course page to organize the sections
- Sections – Uses Headers to describe Lessons
- Lessons – Create their own Lesson pages to house Lesson content
- Sections – Uses Headers to describe Lessons
Course Creators have the choice of building simply in the course builder; adding video links, quizzes, etc… or can elect to open the WordPress Block Editor to add more detail.
Ability to Track Orders – The Free core plugin includes the manual payment gateway. This enables the Course Creator to actively sell courses and track orders. This is a great feature in a “Proof of Concept” site to gauge the success of a training concept. Once decided, it is seamless to upgrade the Payment Gateway with one of the LifterLMS Payment Gateway Add-ons like Stripe, PayPal, Authorize.net, or even WooCommerce – opening up many more options for finance and integration.
Ability to Quiz – An elemental function of teaching is to monitor or qualify the retention of knowledge. Whether you refer to the process as a Knowlege Check, Survey, Quiz, or Test, LifterLMS has basic quizzing integrated into the Free Core Plugin. Quizzes are developed within the Course Builder. There are a variety of quiz types included in the Free Core Plugin, however, if you require more depth in the quiz format, LifterLMS does have an Advanced Quizzes Add-on available.
Reporting – The heart of a good LMS (Learning Management System) is the ability to track the progress and results of students. LifterLMS includes robust reporting within the Free Core Plugin. These reports are useful to view within the browser, but can also be downloaded via .csv for use and manipulation in spreadsheets as required.
Engagements and Notifications – While separate functions, these two work together to interact with the students of the site. As users register for courses, or memberships, or finish lessons & courses the LifterLMS Notifications alert the user through a series of emails and on-screen alerts. Creators have the ability to customize these messages.
In addition, the creator can also elect to initiate other Engagement tools such as badges and certificates. These are optional engagements a creator using the Free LifterLMS Core Plugin can select using the Engagements menu within the dashboard.
Ability to Integrate – LifterLMS has many Add-Ons that you can use to personalize your own LifterLMS experience, however, LifterLMS also gives creators the ability to generate a Rest API key for use in integration as they see need. LifterLMS is compatible with integration tools like WPFusion, Zapier, AutomatorWP, and others while also giving users the ability to customize integration via API.
Summary
What makes starting with the LifterLMS Free Core Plugin a great idea? It gives you the opportunity to express your eLearning content in a stable, professional manner within a budget. Then, as your project grows or needs change, that same stable platform is able to expand to meet your needs. When you elect LifterLMS as your LMS platform, you know that as your needs change our tools will fill the gap. If you need to add a payment gateway, advanced quizzes, Groups functionality, Social Learning, or even Private Areas… these can all be added as Add-Ons or with the upgrade to one of the LifterLMS Bundles. Upgrading is easy and does not require changes to your course structure or work you’ve already put into your site.